“The Passage” is an adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” It is the story of the ill-fated Pequod, a whaling ship whose captain is the obsessed and vengeful Captain Ahab. Despite the possibility of plentiful whaling, Ahab’s obsessive quest for the ferocious white whale, Moby Dick, leads all, but one, aboard the ship to their death. The sole survivor is the play’s narrator, Ishmael.
The play is more of a “poetic fantasia than an literal adaptation.” We are trying to understand man’s relationship to nature, and the beauty and terror that we encounter, often at the same time, in life. There are a handful of songs, a smattering of puppetry, plenty of skeletons, a silent film, film landscapes, and contemporary satire. It is morbidly funny in parts, but also achingly, barrenly, sad.